Iconoclasts on Fairfax

Iconoclast Editions’ Pop-Up Shop on Fairfax in West Hollywood is open for another week, until Monday, April 6.

Los Angeles-based photographer Shawn Mortensen’s photographs are exhibited, along with the work of other artists, mostly prints, including three vintage serigraphs by the late artist and illustrator Charley Harper.

Harper is known for his stylized wildlife illustrations he did for the US National Parks Dept. in the mid-20th century. There’s a copy of the enormous book, Charley Harper, An Illustrated Life, edited by Todd Oldham, right when you walk in the gallery, that makes you feel Lilliputian as you hoist open its cover.

Iconoclast is a project-based studio based in Cincinnati that collaborates with artists to create exhibits, publications and artist editions. It produced Beautiful Losers in 2004, the notable street art exhibition that originated at Cincinnati’s Contemporary Arts Center and included work by LA’s Shepard Fairey. The exhibit toured nationally, making a stop at the Orange County Museum of Art in 2005.

[History lesson: CAC was a political flashpoint in 1990, thanks to the newly declared “culture war” by conservative Republican scolds who took umbrage at its National Endowment for the Arts-funded exhibit of photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe depicting sexually charged images of gay men. Maybe you remember when the state of Ohio filed obscenity charges against CAC; and Republican Senators Jesse Helms and Alfonse D’Amato waved photographs of gay men in sexual situations in front of their colleagues and wailed about “outrage.” S & M can have that effect on faint-hearted types like Senators, I guess.]

Many converging cultural axes to be had in the Fairfax District — but like I said, only through April 6th.